


Executioner's Song and the State of Cain

by Madiholmes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Essay, Gen, Nonfiction, Robert Berens - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 14:48:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3451058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madiholmes/pseuds/Madiholmes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study on Cain and the shifting narrative of what happens when someone loses control over their addiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Executioner's Song and the State of Cain

That there are a couple of assumptions that are made during the episode, The Executioner's Song. While Cain did retconn some of his back history, it could have come from two things. The first is that Berens just did a classic Carver where the previous episode was retconned for the simple sake of easiness and slight laziness where the current plot is no longer dependent on already established lore.

But I don’t expect that from Berens. He is a much better writer than that, and I’m willing to give up him the benefit of the doubt on it so far. Which means we have to judge the two episodes together in a before/after context that potentially shows a portrait in addiction and self destruction. The titular conceit of "The Executioner's Song" was specifically referencing Gary Knowles who actively wanted to be executed, which was the exact same thing Cain wanted in his first episode. That was the real scam Cain pulled by pushing Dean even as Dean (for once) didn't want to do what he generally does best and likes.

Instead of the Carver style of "eh, whatever," there are now two versions of Cain in both episodes that are complete contrasts. The first is the staid, sober man up who has managed to control himself for over 150 years on his quiet farm. The second is the man who gave in to his addictions, and potentially self-destructive because of it. The second retconned the first, but he’s untrustworthy now from it. We’re not sure how much we can trust both his own memories of events and future prophecies.

When Cain was first on, he wasn’t in just in remission, but in flat out sobriety with his 150 year chip firmly in place. He was in full control, and knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to die, and knew that Dean was capable of doing it. If there’s one thing Dean is good at, it’s killing things. That was the true demon deal Cain made.

Later Cain retconned all of that back story into some rambling, massive con about setting Dean up to return the blade so he can keep killing even more, but this time with crystal meth added to the speedballs to really crank the justification up to 11. It made sense during the speech, but it falls apart when compared to the first episode.

Cain right then was in full on addiction, and was using every junkie logic trick in the book. Everything at that point was a tool to keep juicing and to get Dean to kill him. The promise of death fed the addiction to killing, and the addiction fed the promise. It was a win-win for someone that out of control. But he’d lost the narrative at that point. He’d tangled up his entire conspiracy theory about “playing” Dean for his own ends that he couldn’t even remember the actual events during that original sequence.

It was the ramblings of an addict who had spent far too many sleepless nights trying to justify his own actions and to get his own next hit. It wasn’t just killing murderers and baddies, he went after the innocents in such a way that the Winchester couldn’t not notice and that Dean couldn’t not kill him. He was trying to play the baby Hitler card, but it’s just more bad logic. Other people from non Cain lineages were also murderers and bad people, but he neglected them in order to send that message. The kid had done nothing wrong, nor had many others in the cemetery. But it wasn’t Cain punishing the guilty- even the death row inmate. It was about the addiction in the end.

In the end, he had gone nuclear in just the right amount of crazy justification and hitting all of the supernatural mytharc/destiny targets that Dean and the audience knew there was no stopping him without going full Man of Steel. And in the end, he mapped out the new destiny of Dean as the new Cain in a very powerful manner. But we have to take the ramblings of an insane man as fact that this is what will happen- that Cain’s faults and failures are Dean’s faults and failures.

Cain wants Dean to fail, because it exonerates Cain just that much more. It’s no longer Cain’s fault that he killed his brother- he was tricked and destined to do so. It’s no longer Cain’s fault that he murdered people for his own fix- it was a structural victimization of the mark as punishment and drug addiction, not that Cain’s failures are that he couldn’t get back on the wagon after a rather laudable act of courage and self-sacrifice and ultimate failure. He thinks he fell off now solely due to the addiction- that he truly wanted this, but it wasn’t really. He never wanted to go back, and he never wanted to start again to begin with. We know this, because of the scene where he went to mourn for his wife. Junkies don’t go begging for absolution and forgiveness. If Cain had been long conning Dean the whole time, he never would have gone back to the burial site. He never would have confronted that side of himself, and begged for forgiveness. If his whole plan was to get the knife, he simply would have just walked away after that deal and not looked back on any of it.

And that’s where we’re left in this show. The future is almost certainly contingent on those future exposition moments as provided by Cain like a blinded seer. It gives the show shape and future substance of definable traits, which is very rare under Carver. The more that Berens gets to write the mytharc eps, the stronger he becomes as a writer, and the stronger the show becomes as a whole. Unfortunately, he’s a baby show writer, battling his own nicotine lozenge addictions, and has to contend with the other writers who aren’t as solid as he is. But he’s given us a new foundation of the likes not seen since Kripke, and hopefully Carver can use those to further expand and finally end the show.

And if I were to guess. It's not that Sam who should be afraid of Dean, but that Dean should be afraid of Sam at this point.


End file.
